For Tocqueville, people like us — living in an era when it has become obvious that the definitive thing about us is how similar we all are to each other as humans — two competing anthropologies rise to the fore. According to the first, being human is defined by being in servitude to a heavenly master. According to the second, being human is defined by being in servitude to an earthy master. For people like us, today, that seems to tee up the same old culture clash. But Tocqueville himself made some little-noticed and very pregnant remarks in Democracy in America about just what kind of anthropology would suffice to steer us, in the fragility of our freedom, away from servility before the state and its human masters. He speculated that belief in an immortal soul, or even reincarnation, might be enough.

I offer a rather different answer to the same question. I think it’s an answer that can work not just for Republicans who want to take a shared stand together for the betterment of humankind, but for any particular American who feels that way too. You may be on the edge of your seat about what this anthropology might be. You might be slumped pretty far back in your seat with skepticism and cynicism. Either way, the first hurdle for us to clear is a shared recognition that we should choose not to limit ourselves to a policy conversation — and that without a deeper conversation about what anthropological vision can capture all our imaginations, all the wonkery in the world is largely a waste of some very precious time.

Yet it’s just the details of the anthropological vision that James wants to argue for that I’m uncertain about. James hasn’t worked them out in full, but he has given us a glimmer:

Just as, in biblical religion, one must ponder the possibilities of a God whose name is “I am that I am,” or “I am that I shall become,” in the free-radical vein that I’ve been developing this year, the quaint anthropology of the rational actor who rank-orders his or her preferences is abandoned in favor of a vision of you, me, and everyone as a person who is what he or she shall become — through language, by making authentic declarations acted into being. (By “authentic” I mean born out of an accurate and witnessed acknowledgement of real-life experience, not the distorted judgments formed by imitation, memory, or fear. See, e.g., the language of declaration, direct experience, and sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence.)

We all know, or can know, what it is to experience a clearing-away of mere imitation, of stale or warped memory, and of biting fear, and an a speaking into that empty space of new promises to ourselves and others grounded in little more than what we see newly possible as a choice that inspires us and others into motion. Once shared, this experience occurs to us as profoundly personal and profoundly human.

It’s here whether I wonder how commensurate this alternative vision of anthropology is with traditional Christian teaching about God and our freedoms in light of his providence. The emphasis on “clearing away” and “speaking into that empty space of new promises to ourselves and others grounded in little more than what we see newly possible as a choice that inspires us and others into motion” sounds, to my ear, almost like an optimistic strand of existentialism. The world of things, the “empty space” before us, has been bounded in advance by promises and speakings not of our own choosing or utterance. Such is, it seems to me, the promise of the doctrine of providence. Our task is to discern and live within such boundaries responsibly. Our freedom is only truly free when it has this correlate, when it is responsive to a moral order and to the institutions that bear and communicate that moral order.*

I suspect my worry really arises right at Poulos’s “little more.” James is adopting a minimalist stance , because without such an approach it will never have legs anywhere beyond….places like Mere-Orthodoxy, and we all know how massively influential we are.

Still, it seems that this radical openness to the future and the emphasis on our own near-divine creative activity actually undercuts our humanity while paradoxically humanizing God. By adding “or that I shall become” to the description of God James leaves “biblical religion” behind by introducing an unqualified openness, where the future of God is in no way bound by what he has revealed himself to be. In a sense, that seems to open up space for an abstract “deity” behind the God of the Bible, which is perhaps why James turns toward the language of the Declaration of Independence as resources for his point.

But James’ radical openness also creates a a conception of choice in accordance with imagined possibilities that has no resources to resist the excesses of libertarian posthumanism and all the free unicorns that they want for us. That isn’t an argument for or against per se, as the question of such a future needs to be taken up on its own merit. But it does make it seem unlikely that anyone with conservative theological commitments will be able to buy a ticket on the free radicals train.

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My issue here is that I think Poulos is trying to build a bridge between a Biblical view – that of being made in the image of God (shown in his first paragraph of the second quote you use) – and the secular view of tolerance and self help (the second paragraph). In doing so, I think he makes the mistake of many of the old philosophers of trying to reconcile the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God instead of acting as an agent of redemption to this world and, in so doing, misses out on the true and better anthropology of the Bible – that we are, presently, made in the image of God. While there is something to be said for his future tense – that we live in a fallen world and our bodies are still subjected to the fall – I think he tries to look for a “butterflies and rainbows” future that the world just doesn’t honestly give unless you have a redemptive view of history. In which case I have to ask – why ask “what he or she shall become” when you already have all the worth and value written on someone in their image bearing nature? The future apart from redemption doesn’t guarantee that he or she shall become anything more than what they are. The only Being with the power to ascribe that worth is God – and that happens in His image that has already been written on us and provides us with infinite value and worth as human beings. We don’t have to hope for some future that may or may not come to pass – it’s already present. And second, to get to what his future vision does parallel to, we have the hope of the kingdom of God when God reconciles the kingdom of this world with His kingdom. But – hard as it is to say – this isn’t a kingdom promised to everyone, and while we hope for it as believers, and the promise of His coming kingdom should move us to hope that reconciliation for others and to preach the Gospel to see that reconciliation come to pass “through a mirror dimly,” putting a vision of everyone under it is a little false, I think, as some won’t have that kingdom.

So, in summary, what does Poulos provide in his anthropological vision that the Bible doesn’t already give us in being image bearers of God?

Matthew Miller

“all the free unicorns they want for us” is one of the better clauses I’ve read today.

But seriously, this is a good point, though (as I’m sure you’re the first to acknowledge, Matt) based on a pretty oblique and fragmentary set of texts. There’s a lot of room for Poulos to develop these ideas and (hopefully) address these concerns.

all the free unicorns that they want for us.
all the free unicorns that they want for us.
all the free unicorns that they want for us.

Matthew Miller

Hmm, something weird happened with the command-V function that produced that weird little piece of poetry at the end. I see the edit function; but I’m leaving it.